Poop Power

San Francisco, named after Saint Francis the patron saint of animals, has an estimated 240,000 dogs and cats. And these cuddly furry beings produce about 10 million tons of poop every year, which eats up a large portion of the city's landfill.

City officials now wants to look into a technology that will recycle the excrements not in any way edible, but turn it into energy that will power up your home appliances.

Dog feces could be scooped into a methane digester, a device that uses bugs and microorganisms to gobble up the material and emit methane, which would be trapped and burned to power a turbine to make electricity or to heat homes. This technology is nothing new. It has been in use in Europe since 20 years ago and some farms in the US too.

The Poodle and Dog blog thinks San Francisco could have a new way to reduce the U.S. dependence on foreign oil without doing any of that ugly oil drilling. Well, theres the ewwy picking up of the poop.

"The main impediment is probably getting communities around the country the courage to collect it, to give value to something we'd rather not talk about," [CNN] says an environmentalist.

Because as much owners love their pets, they're not too keen on cleaning after them.